How To Run Britain

by Robert Peston and Kishan Koria

This was an easy to read book on the UK's economic problems. It contains a really good retrospective of the problems over the past 50 or more years: Financial crisis, Quantitive Easing, Covid, trust in politics, cost of UK debt and productivity issues compared to other, similar, countries.

Unfortunately, reading the book just a year after was updated, a lot of the thoughts, especially on AI, but also global policitcs, are already looking very dated.

Rehashing the Covid years, whilst interesting to shine a spotlight on the corruption of the British elite, doesn't really add all that much. Except perhaps that we should prepare for future catastrophic events, no matter their likelihood of actually happening, because if they do happen, it will be, well, catastrophic. Just like we do with nuclear weapons. But with who's money? We are also told that the UK is effectively bust.

The idea that AI might save the world looks especially ill-placed. Whilst it could indeed do so, that would only be possible with democratic controls currently being eroded with the help of AI itself.

Some interesting critique of how Thatcher's reforms led to quasi corrupt dealing in British business, hyping up businesses in order to make a quick profit, without actually improving their fundamentals. Likewise a very good critique of Johnson in the final chapter.

The explanation of how gearing works when buying companies through debt was helpful. Likewise pointing out that better performing economies might have higher interest rates than weaker ones, because their better performance risks leading to inflation. I had always thought of interest rates to the likelihood that you will repay. In fact there was a lot of useful information in the book, it was just not answering the question in the title of the book.

At present, given the global, right-wing, nationalistic narratives and Trump's tarrifs, most of the few recommendations the book makes don't look possible until after the catastrophe they are trying to avoid. It just looks like wishful thinking that the questions raised in the final "not a manifesto" manifesto will ever get reasonable answers and global agreement. None of the three current world leaders (Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping) could care less about democracy. One of them was even democractically elected.

Probably the best point made in the book is that the UK "must abandon the idea that the UK will always win and be the best. Instead we should concentrate on being good enough". It's probably valid for most countries in the world. In fact most of the problems the UK is facing are hardly unique and are equally applicable to most of Europe, at least. Perhaps it's worse in the UK, but not in all cases.

Whilst the non manifesto gave some good ideas and food for thought on how the UK could be run in a more equal fashion, overall the book could be better titled as "How not to run Britain".

I've read a few of these types of economic books over the years and I can't help feeling that the sole focus on economics in solving a nation's, or the world's, problems is wrong. Maybe we need to focus on the social side of things more directly. These books often contain a lot of useful ideas, but apparently no ones listening. Why?

From 10.08.2025 to 16.08.2025